I received another poor performance review this weekend.
My husband has a lot of good traits. It’s for that reason I didn’t strangle him this weekend.
My husband works out-of-state during the week, so for five days I am essentially a single mother. I work part-time from home, homeschool the two older children (and will homeschool my youngest starting in the fall), and run the household.
For the third weekend in a row, my husband has come home and decided to criticize everything.
- Why didn’t the sticks in the yard get picked up?
- Why didn’t these boxes get delivered to the Salvation Army?
- Why didn’t our daughter finish this essay?
- Why aren’t the DVDs in alphabetical order?
- How many times did you check the sump pump this week?
- The ultimate:I don’t want to hear “can’t,” I want to hear “done.”
I can keep going, but I don’t want to.
See why he’s lucky to still be breathing?
The first two weekends I simply answered his questions. He’s under a lot of stress, he’s tired, we don’t always say or do the right things…I can cut him some slack. However, by Weekend Number Three I see it as a pattern and not just simple stress.
And, of course, my patience has been tried, to put it mildly.
So, at “I don’t want to hear ‘can’t,’ I want to hear ‘done,’” I let him have it.
“Since when are you my boss and I am subject to your performance reviews?” I said in a very confrontational voice. (Nope, no kind patience from me here. I was angry.)
My husband, predictably, immediately denied criticizing me and trying to boss me around and said he was only “asking questions.”
“Okay,” I said. “I have some questions for you:
- Why aren’t the taxes finished when you claim you have four lonely nights a week with nothing to do?
- Why haven’t you cleaned out ‘your stuff’ I’m not allowed to touch in the garage?
- Why haven’t you ordered the siding for the house?
- Why haven’t you finished rebuilding the Fisher Price Jeep for the little one?
- Why haven’t you changed the pully and the belt for the lawn tractor?”
My husband quickly answered, “I don’t have time to get to a lot of that stuff. You know that.”
“Yeah, and it sucks to have someone criticizing you, playing armchair quarterback or backseat driver, and having someone micromanage and judge your time, doesn’t it?” I shot back. “In three weekends I have not had one “thank you” for preparing meals for you to take with you, or keeping the house clean, or educating the children, or keeping up with my part-time job and bringing in some extra money, but I have heard PLENTY of everything that isn’t done to YOUR satisfaction. AND I have not said ONE THING about any of that other stuff not getting finished or telling you there is no reason that it shouldn’t be finished. So, since you want to act like my ‘boss,’ just remember I can resign from doing this at any time.”
Shocked silence.
Then, I added,
“Don’t confuse me loving you and being your wife with me being Mary Poppins and Molly Maid combined. I’m not perfect, but I work HARD.”
Humph.
Okay, so there is my dirty laundry aired to the blogsphere.
So why put this out there? Because being a mother really is a job, and, apparently, the job I do is not fully recognized or appreciated. And that, frankly, hurts.
I’d like to think that the man I love, the man I married, the man to whom I am committed, understands and appreciates what I do all the time.
But, alas, mothers are not always appreciated. Most of it is lip-service. Yeah, we have the most important job in the world…and how does that most important job in the world serve us when we want to enter or re-enter the business world? You can get a tax credit for child care when you have a job outside the home, but not a tax credit for foregoing the second income or having a business from home and cutting out cable and hanging the laundry to be home for the children.
Feminism has certainly advanced the cause of women for the better on many fronts. We still have the “glass ceiling” and still do not earn as much as men. (There are many theories for this, ranging from chauvinism to mothers leaving the workplace for maternity leave or even just taking a few years off to be home, but that’s beside the point here.) What is feminism doing to advance respect for being a mother, regardless of whether she is in the business world or managing the home full-time?
I work HARD. I’m not the only mother who does so.
I am very lucky. Another reason why my husband is still breathing is he did apologize. A little while later he offered to take me out to lunch before he had to head back to work…then proceeded to make sandwiches for the girls before we left. We had a nice lunch over which we briefly talked about how we can help each other during the week, then talked about much more pleasant things. Later, as he chose from his selection of homemade meals from the freezer to take with him, he thanked me for making sure he had a variety of meals that he liked. I do think he cares and he does realize that which I do…most of the time. And, most of the time, he is not so critical.
But when you take a child to the hospital for tests and the person in the admissions office asks you, “Are you employed or just a housewife,” I still have the urge to want to spout of, “No, I’m a nobody, I don’t collect a paycheck. Thank you for making me feel better about what I do.” I know what he/she means is do I have an employer for insurance purposes, but the choice of words is telling. That people still use such words is telling.
Perhaps I am just too sensitive.
But I don’t like bad performance reviews which question how hard I work…from anyone.
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